Movies and music are almost inseparable. From the earliest days of cinema, music has always been essential to cinemagoers. Film scores help the audience to identify with what’s happening onscreen, connecting with the emotions felt by the characters and transferring that to viewers

In the silent movie era, filmmakers had no dialogue, or even sound effects, to help set the tone for audiences; all they had were the expressions of the actors and, of course, music. Often it was dramatic music which played over the entire length of the film, doing its best to get the audience emotionally involved in everything from comedy to tragedy.

Just as the rest of cinema changed with the arrival of sound, so did the music. Now it had to complement the dialogue and sound of the movie, to act alongside the actors. It had less work to do as the main emotional driver and became a tool that filmmakers used to supplement the onscreen events.

As movies moved on from the theatrical elements of silent cinema into the more realistic and subtle styles of modern cinema the scores followed them. They became more individual, more recognisable; they lost the derivative nature of some of the early movies and moved into the more nuanced, sometimes experimental style common in the ’60s, which was led by composers like Ennio Morricone and Miklos Rozsa and would influence Hollywood for decades to come. This gave rise to a new type of sound: the popular movie score.

A huge amount of cinema scores have now become as recognisable and popular as mainstream music and are instantly connectable to the films they came from. Sometimes just a few notes can be enough to bring to mind a movie. Take Terminator; five drum beats and you’re imagining Arnold Schwarzenegger, red eye glowing while he stomps along as the unstoppable metal cyborg.

Undoubtedly, the master of popular cinema music is John Williams. The number of his scores that people recognise immediately is immense, and again, they can succeed in bringing an image to mind instantly. From the opening cello notes from Jaws, to the march from Raiders of the Lost Ark, these scores have become as much a part of people’s childhood and memories as any pop song from the past; and they have a longevity, with his Star Wars score standing the test of time to be used in movies today.

On the opposite side, not all scores are intended to be so memorable. A lot of action movies in particular don’t leave you humming the tune after the credits have finished; they tend to have harder, more basic scores that are used to drive the high-adrenaline car chases and stunt work, and often end up being drowned out by the explosions and sound effects. They are there for a purpose, and once that’s been completed, that’s it.

Not all scores are recorded by orchestras either. Several bands have tried their hands at creating music for cinema, including the rock legend Queen, using electric guitars to great effect on their music for Flash Gordon, while in the ’80s and ’90s many films were scored with a heavy use of electronic sound and synths by artists such as Vangelis.

In the end, movie scores have a point: to make us feel the emotions the director wants us to feel; to make us love and hate the characters; to make us believe that what is happening onscreen is real, and if they succeed in that purpose then they can be considered to be truly great pieces of music.